horrible night at lab. horrible. police brought in a tiny baby, coding.
We were running around like crazy already. Then ED called (for like the 10th time in a row) and this time asked us to bring tubes to a doctor. Cussing them out because nobody can come pick them up, don't they have tubes down there, etc. 2nd shift tech headed down with the tubes.
She was missing for a while, and then returned at least a half hour later, crying. She said at first she saw baby and was like, aw, poor sick baby. Then she realized it was blue and not breathing. Her first daughter is pregnant right now with her first grandchild, so it hit her especially hard. The doctor was trying to get specs from the femur to run toxicology tests on. No specs ever arrived. 
No parents ever arrived either, to my knowledge.
She left crying. It was quiet for about an hour after she left, and then, as usual, just before midnight, shit hit fan. Our lab info system quit working. It wouldn't switch the batches over to today and it wouldn't reconnect with the instruments. I did finally get it to switch to today, but it still wouldn't connect with any of the analyzers.
I was driving home when I remembered that I forgot to tell the am tech about the latest water problem with the chemistry analyzer because I was too busy telling her that the LIS system wasn't printing any labels, the hematology 'puter wasn't working right, and none of the analyzers were connected with their hosts. So I had to call her at 3am with instructions on what to do during the morning labs to make sure the analyzer doesn't run out of water.
I feel like I was beaten over the head with clubs.
= new reply since forum marked as read
work that goes on to get test results to the docs so they can figure
out treatment plans. Sorry you had such a crazy night. Hope tonight
is better. 
Ever hear what happened to the baby in the ED?
the doctor was making last ditch effort to get specs to try to figure out what had gone wrong. No specs arrived probably because the blood was not flowing at all.
Most people don't realize that the vast majority of codes don't survive. It's not like on tv.
Our hospital workers have no idea what goes on in the lab. They seem to think we just hang around doing nothing. The good news is that somebody who works in the ED just got hired to be a lab assistant. Already she is overwhelmed by "how much" she needs to know and "how crazy busy" we are. Hopefully she will bring some of her new insights into the lab back to the ED staff...
my prayer to work was "Please God don't let me f&@$ up and kill someone" and my prayer coming home was "Thank God no one died on my shift". It is so stressful that you forget the hundreds of things you did right. Now add a Nurse eat their young environment and there you have it.
Edited because I forgot my other mantra....Coffee before the shift, alcohol after the shift.